Finding Your Writing Voice
Why I believe everyone can write
By Diane Covington
Writing is a simple, direct link to your soul, a voice, waiting to be heard, tapped into. It’s right there. One way to access it is to find a safe place, some simple exercises and possibly some like-minded people to allow it to come through.
Your voice might be a whisper at first, but it is there. In the hundreds of people I have taught, it has never failed.
Here’s how I do my classes. You could follow this format on your own with a few like-minded folks. Each class begins with a short meditation to help everyone to relax and to arrive. The meditation becomes a signal for the right brain and the inner self to know that the time is coming for it to speak and to draw a line between the rest of life and the time to write.
Then we do a simple exercise to focus on using the senses, what do you see, hear, smell, touch or taste. These are fun and easy to do. Flowers and fruit work well here or a river or creek. The exercises also give the left brain something to do so that it relaxes, but the act of using the senses powerfully evokes the right brain and it can then sneak in past the left brain, which is busy.
The analogy, which I use, is of elephants in the marketplace. In India, they used to give the elephants a stick to hold onto with their trunks so that they wouldn’t knock down all the stalls as they walked through the marketplace. Sensory exercises give the left brain a ‘stick’ to hold onto so that while it is busy, you can then hear your voice and what it wants to say and go there.
If you have never written or if you long to get past your ‘writing phobia’ which happened in 11th grade, just begin writing in a journal and focusing on your senses. I also recommend reading and doing the exercises in “The Artist’s Way”, by Julia Cameron.
I made believers out of a group of teens I taught when I told them: “Writing is about you hearing yourself and having a way to tap into what you really think about life. That will help you make all the important decisions you will be facing soon—where to go to college, what to study, what career to follow, who to love.” They heard me and came to me class. They were astounded by what they could write and so was I.
I teach writing classes at my organic farm five minutes outside Nevada City. In winter, we are in by the fire. In good weather we write outside, taking in all the sensory delights around us.
Happy Writing!
Diane Covington can be reached at 265-4050 or dianecov@iglide.net.
